Green eyes opened slowly as the morning sunlight washed over the savanna. Squinting in pain from the sting of the bright sunlight, the eyes looked around as they blinked. A groan rolled out of the green-eyed man as he went to push himself up, but failed as his body was just too tired and sore. His arms and legs felt three times as heavy as normal, and the beaten-up leather armour he was wearing was not helping either. It took another few minutes of breathing heavily before he managed to even get himself to a sitting position, groan in pain as he did.

It stunk here to, and it was not just him and the gore he was splattered with. Corpses lay around him, corpses of monstrous beasts that fed on human flesh, living, dead, rotten, it did not matter, they consumed all. These things were necrophages, and there were a lot of bodies laying around. Most of them had been regular ghouls, a half dozen or so alghouls, a few devourers and at least two cemetaurs. These had been the creatures that the green-eyed man and his wife had been contracted to destroy, as they had been causing the locals some issues as the pack ran together.

However, during the fight, another pack of necrophages, attracted by the violence, had found them. This group had joined just after the fight with the first group had ended and the two hunters had thought their job done. Adrenaline had stopped flowing, their bodies started into recovery, only to be forced back into fighting mode again, forced to use stimulants to push their bodies to their limits. The second group had contained rotfeinds and a few greater rotfiends but worst of all had been the bullvore, a hulking, rotting monster covered in spikes and possessing a massive strength compared to its necrophage comrades.

But the hunters had done it, but at a great cost as the fight had lasted far longer into the night than expected. From a sitting position to a kneeling one the green-eyed man looked around, he went to speak but his throat was dry and raw, how long had he been passed out for? He was not dead, so that meant they had managed to kill everything during the night and now that the sun was out the bodies were starting to rot at an expedited rate. He reached for his pack, but it was gone, probably under one of the bodies, but he was not in any condition to start moving them.

”Bella!?” He managed to croak out, as he staggered to his feet and gasped in pain. He was covered in gore from the beasts, but he was wounded. At least one rib was broken, probably two, his left leg had a torn muscle and by the look of his shredded pant leg he had just avoided losing that leg. But they had scratched him and infection would set in soon if it hadn’t already. Otherwise he had a lot of bruises to deal with and would be sore for a rather long time.

”Bella!” He croaked again and spotted her cap about forty feet away and started in that direction. If she was dead he did not know what he’d do with himself, he’d probably just end it all along side her, she was the only reason he continued on day to day.

A body lay spread eagle on the ground. Tendrils of black hair spilled out around the body’s head, matted in blood and other viscera from the decimated, beastly bodies scattered around it. The lower half of the body’s face was covered by a black scarf of sorts, obscuring it’s mouth and nose. The clothing worn by the body obscured most of its form, but the peak at the body’s chest suggested a female. In one hand, the female body held a long katana with intricate carvings along it, a beautiful cage around the hilt. The other hand grasped the hilt of a matching dagger.

A moment passed, and the body twitched. Seconds later, charcoal rimmed hazel eyes snapped open, staring at the sky above her. She gasped beneath the fabric covering her mouth, a gasp of both consciousness and pain. Her hands let go of the hilts of the weapons she had held, immediately coming to her stomach, the source of her pain. She could feel warmth and wetness, and she remembered – one of the bullvore’s spikes had impaled her stomach at one point or another. She was sure she was going to die, but here she was, still alive – but for how long?

She lay back, her hands cupping the wound still seeping blood. One of her hands drew away and moved to pull the fabric down covering her face. Inhaling through her nose, however, only brought the sun-rotten stench of the rotting corpses around her, and she immediately gagged, pulling the fabric back over her nose. ”Riko,” she said, thinking she was screaming her husband’s name… but what actually came out was barely above a whisper. She was drained, exhausted, and possibly dying – and she had no clue where he was.

Her eyes closed and she felt the warmth of the sun on her face, the pain throbbing in her stomach a sharp contrast to the pleasantness of the sun. She could hear Riko calling her name, but she was sure it was in her mind – they always said you saw your loved ones in death, though she wasn’t sure that was true for hunters such as herself. Some of the rituals they underwent to obtain their power, she was sure they stripped so much humanity away… but here she was, hearing his voice.

His voice grew louder, though, and this was interesting to her. She managed to open her eyes, and tilted her head to one side. She thought she could see him coming towards her in the distance, and she heard her name even louder. She wasn’t imagining it, it was him coming towards her – and maybe, just maybe, he’d be able to hear her, if she mustered every last ounce of strength she had – and she did just that.

Through the searing pain, she managed to prop herself on one elbow, setting her apart from the corpses surrounding her. ”Riko!” she yelled, her voice fraught with pain. She pulled down at the fabric covering her mouth, yelling his name again so that the fabric would not dampen the sound of her feeble voice. ”Riko!” she shouted again, followed by a cough, with a small trickle of blood forming at the corner of her mouth – not a good sign, she was sure. She tried to prop herself up even further, but failed, only able to get herself into a half sitting position, praying to the old gods that he would make it to her.

Green eyes caught the movement among the corpses as Bella cried out and he went to her, grabbing his own weapons as he did. ”Bella!” She was alive! As he neared her, without thinking about it, he reached down and grabbed her cap that was on the ground and brought it over to her. Dropping to his knees next to her and setting her cap next to her, Riko reached down and cupped his wife’s cheek. ”I’m here.” He breathed as he looked her over, stomach wound, that’s right, she had been almost impaled when the bullvore had attacked suddenly. The blood at the corner of her mouth was hers as well, and it was fresh, more internal damage most likely.

Once again, he reached for his pack, but it was still not there, probably lost and crushed under all the monsters’ bodies. So, he had no medical aid then. ”Lay still.” He whispered and searched through her pockets and found her last vial, it was not a lot considering the damage she had taken, but it was something. Riko took the vial with the needle on the end and poked it into her neck and injected the alchemical mixture that also contained her own blood. It would jump start her healing process to well beyond the human standard, but that stomach would take too long.

He cupped her cheek again and leaned down to kiss her. ”Let’s get you up, that farm house that was abandoned isn’t too far away.” It took a bit of effort from both of them and not a little amount of pain but Bella got to her feet and they had to support each other, and carry their weapons. The torn muscle in his left leg was killing him and making him walk with a very obvious limp, and now that he was up and moving he could feel that rib that was broken was moving, which just added more pain.

It took the couple the better part of an hour to find the farmhouse. It had been abandoned when the monsters had been roving the lands, the farmers had been smart enough to leave after most of their cattle had been slaughtered. They were waiting for word that they could return once the two hunters arrived back at the village to inform the people that the deed was done. But they’d have to wait for a bit, and the hunters would make use of their house for a time, but they could never make it back to the village in the condition they were in now.

There were a few bovine left however and they were hanging around the place when Bella and Riko arrived, mooing at them. Riko noted the well outside as he used his weapon to pry open the locked door allowing them to get inside the modest house. ”Here we are.” He breathed as he gasped for air, helping to get Bella into the first bed they saw. She went to protest this but Riko placed a finger on her lips. ”I’m not arguing about this, you stay put.” He kissed her forehead and stood, limping back into the kitchen to find some tools.

He came back a minute later with a sharp knife, two bottles of what looked like moonshine and he had rummaged enough to find the needle and thread in one of the drawers, after jabbing his hand into the needle. Setting everything down with a grunt as his torn muscle was making it harder and harder to walk, Riko reached down again to help Bella remove her clothing from the waist up.

After she was undressed enough to work on, Riko let her drink some of the moonshine and he did to before kissing her again. ”This is going to hurt.” He took her hand in his left hand and squeezed as he poured the moonshine onto her wound to clean it, when he thought that was good enough on her, he used the rest on his own leg to stop some of the infection that was setting in. He groaned and ground his teeth but the pain passed enough to be bearable. He had found a candle and had lit it with a flint and steel near the fire place and used it to heat the needle up until he could bend it into a curve. He got the threading in it and reached and looked to Bella. ”Ready?” He needed to start closing the wound, the knife would be to remove any decayed or infected flesh.

This was going to be messy and enormously painful.

The moment Riko came to Bella’s side was the moment she realized she was going to survive, at least for now. She turned her head to one side as he sifted through her pockets, knowing he was looking for one of her vials. She wasn’t even sure if she had any left, but she felt the tip of the needle inserted into her neck a few moments later, which gave way to the fact that he had found one. It wouldn’t heal her fully, but it would probably keep her from dying.

Turning her head back to look at Riko, she closed her eyes as he bent down and kissed her briefly. She was glad to be reunited with him again, but the number of times things like this had happened was beginning to wear on her. There were only so many times you could think you were going to die, or think that your spouse had died… it was enough to drive anyone to madness.

As Riko helped her to her feet, she couldn’t help but notice that he was injured as well, with the limp in his step. ”You’re hurt… you should have used the vial,” she said, frowning. She winced and let out a gasp of pain as they began to move in the direction of the farmhouse. With their coupled injuries, it took them so much longer to reach their destination than it normally would have. When they reached the place, she protested the moment Riko laid her down on the bed. ”You need to lie down,” she said, but before she got any other words out, he had shushed her, and she lie back in defeat.

She closed her eyes after lying down, only for a moment before popping them back open and analyzing Riko. It was clear that he was injured far worse than his leg let on, but leave it to him to put getting her to safety above his own recovery. When he came back to the bed, she could see what he had in his hands – the tools that could allow him to stitch up the wound in her stomach. She grimaced, knowing full well it was not going to be a pleasant experience. She sat up, attempting to remove the clothing from the upper half of her body. She was grateful for Riko’s assistance, as even the slightest movements of her stomach were absolutely excruciating.
She grasped the bottle of moonshine he offered her and took a big swig. It burned as she swallowed, but it was a near euphoric feeling in comparison to the sizzling pain in her abdomen. As Riko kissed her once more, she found herself cursing their wounds. Had neither of them been so gravely injured, surely they would have been celebrating their victory in a different way. ”No shit,” she said as Riko told her it was going to hurt. Her words were coupled by a weak laugh, clearly trying to lighten her own mood. She squeezed his hand tightly and nodded. ”Just do it,” she said, and as his hands began their work on cleaning the wound before closing it, she let out a scream of agony.

Fortunately for the pair of them, it didn’t take Riko too overly long to mend her wound. He had only needed to slice out one spot of flesh that looked to be infected already. After a moment’s breather when he had finished, she gingerly got up off of the bed, gesturing to him to lay down, regardless of the amount of her own blood that covered the linens. That would be nothing, as the pair had injected themselves with one another’s blood more than once. Just as he had not allowed for her to protest, she did not allow for him to protest, either.

She bent over as best she could and tore at the tattered remains of the pants on his injured leg. The leg itself didn’t look too bad, except the swelling where the internal injury clearly was. She used a bit more of the moonshine to clean the cuts that had been inflicted, but none of them really seemed to require any stitching. A quick, hobbling search of the farmhouse found some old linen, which she bound the injured area of his leg in tightly, frowning any time he made a sound that indicated he was in pain. A few minutes later the leg was bound tightly and propped up on some pillows. She had also taken his shirt off, so as she could analyze the bruises where his ribs were clearly broken. There wasn’t going to be much she could do for him there, but the way the bruising was appearing seemed like there wouldn’t be too much internal bleeding, at least not bad enough where it could be left untreated for a while. They would just have to be careful.

Bella stood, hands on her bare hips, looking down at Riko. Even in both of their sorry states, seeing her husband with such little clothing while she, too, was bare from the waist up, put her into a state. Grimacing due to her own injury, she climbed onto the bed, straddling one leg on either side of Riko. She leaned down to kiss him passionately, conscious of avoiding the injured area of his ribcage. Her hands found his, and she intwined her fingers with his own. A wave of passion coursed through her body, and she thought to herself that they could do this, if they were careful. She bent further to press her lips more firmly against his own, but bolted upright in pain almost immediately with a gasp. ”Fucking hell,” she breathed out, her eyes clenched tight in pain.

She opened her eyes a few minutes later and looked down at Riko, frowning. Her eyes were a bit watery, not clear whether or not it was from the pain or from something else. ”How much longer are we going to keep doing this for?” she asked him, her eyes gazing into his own. ”How many more times are we going to end up just like this?”

”I’m not the one with a puncture wound that’s bleeding.” He replied eyeing her and shushing her when she said for him to lay down instead. He needed to get that wound cleaned and closed before infection set in, neither of them had any healing magic worth speaking of so it was practical way instead. He got what needed to work on her, the moonshine and needle and thread, got her to take a drink of it before using it to clean out her wound and then his own. He grinned at her attempt at levity in the situation, but he knew if he actually laughed he’d double over in pain. Right now he needed to focus on her stomach, and shaking from pain would only make that task harder.

Thankfully, they had got her fast enough that he only had to cut out a bit of infected flesh from her wound before starting to stitch her up. Ignoring his pain so that he focus on closing the wound on his wife, Riko was able to close the wound in decent time causing as little pain as he could, well, beyond what she was already feeling. He cleaned the area again and let her rest. ”Easy…” He sighed as Bella started to get up, but there was no use in arguing on his end this time as she helped him lay down. He hissed in pain once pressure got onto his chest, that broken rib was brutal but once he was laying back and able to breath for a moment it passed from a stabbing pain into a dull ache.

Bella helped him get his pants off, which was just as well since laying down he was not able to sit up, he would have to roll into his side and carry that motion into a sitting position. Honestly, he was thinking he would have rather broken his arm or leg instead of a fucking rib. Bella got his leg bounded tight after she had used the moonshine to clean it making him hiss in pain again, damn that stung. Bella got his shirt off to so she could look at any bruises forming on his chest, while he had his leg elevated to keep the swelling down. Looking up at her, naked from the waist up as she was, Riko smile, he never got tired of seeing Bella undressed.

Seemed she was thinking something along the same lines as he was as she got back in the bed and straddled him. She leaned down as they kissed passionately, as they intertwined their hands together, but she went to press against him further and shot upright in pain. He frowned but did not say anything as she waited for the pain to subside, keeping her hands in his for the few minutes she needed to recover. When she opened her eyes, they were watery, but he could tell there was might be something else making them water than pain.

At her words Riko reached up to wipe the tears from her cheeks, he wanted to sit up and hold her but that was not about to happen. He thought it over for a few seconds, she was right, how long could they keep ending up like this? Scars were stacking up on each other, both physical and mental, and how much longer could the thrill of the fight keep them going? Each time it became a little harder to recover and get back to work again. Highly trained as they were they were still human, even if they had a couple of advantages thanks to some tinkering with Bella’s alchemy, their bodies could only take so much punishment.

He looked back to her again. ”You’re right, we keep going like this we won’t make it to our fifties.” Riko glanced away for a moment and then looked back to her. ”Fuck it, fuck it all. Once we get some strength back, we’ll head back to that village and fully recover there, maybe they’ll have a magic healer that can heal us up quickly. After that, we head to a big city, find a bathhouse, and get a private room and don’t come out for anything. Then, we head to a tavern and inn and get utterly shit faced, get a room and rack up some noise complaints.” He grinned. ”Then we do it all again. Fuck the work, fuck the world, it’s just you and I, Bella, we’ve done enough without true rest for too long. We can be picky with any jobs we do take, only work when we need the coin, not cause ‘it’s the right thing to do’ anymore, others can step up if they want to help. From now on, it’s you and me against the world. What do you say, love?”

A wave of relief washed over Bella as Riko responded to her. The fact that he felt the same as she did regarding the fact that they couldn’t go on the way they were was of no surprise to her, as they thought much the same after all they had been through together, but the fact that he had now agreed with her out loud certainly helped her to feel much better about it. What he went on to say next sounded perfect to her. There was no point for them to continue on in the way they had been. What were they going to get out of it? One of them dead and the other living a life of lonesome despair until they passed too? It sounded like absolute shit, and that wasn’t how she wanted things to go.

”So you’re saying we travel Revaliir, city to city, drinking and fucking our way through the world?” she said, making an attempt to keep her voice level. She raised an eyebrow at Riko and leaned down on her hands slightly, giving him a very soft, yet passionate kiss, careful not to hurt either one of them. ”I think that sounds like the ideal life, especially considering all the shit we’ve been through together,” she said after pulling way from the kiss, still close enough to Riko that her lips brushed against his as she spoke.

Bella sat back up again. ”Let’s rest for the night, even though there are other things I would rather do,” she began, a hand trailing down her husband’s naked chest. ”As soon as we’re ready, we’ll do just what you said – find a healer that can get us ready. Then, we find the nearest city and do just what you said – a private bathhouse, and we’ll stay in there for a week, at least! Pay the extra coin to have food and drink brought to us, we won’t ever leave… it’ll just be you and I. No monsters, no blood, no guts… Just you and I,” she said, her voice having taken on a rather dreamy tone.

Very carefully, she dismounted from her position on top of Riko and gingerly curled up next to him. The small bed the two were on was certainly not meant for two people, but there was no way, even in the injured state they were in, that she was going to get any further away from him. They were in this together, and they were getting out of this together, and that was how it was going to stay.